I had actually purchased a Sea-me a year ago, and after taking it out of the box and reading the instructions, I was discouraged about installing it myself. I have a Davis Echomaster (next best in graph above to sea-me) I keep in storage due to size, until needed in a fog, and thought it might be better to have something more permenantly mounted.Ģ. There is a Plastimo 4 inch tube on display at our local marine store that I was seriously considering picking up (not any more) to keep mounted permenantly. I just saw this a week ago, and had the opportunity to read the entire article, it’s scarry when you combine this with information from an Ocean Navigator article I quote at the end of this message … basically there is no “good” solution. Plus I was surprised that the MAIB didn’t mention Class B AIS in their recommendations about collision avoidance. But it’s a good idea to be reminded that even good passive radar reflectors have limited abilities. You won’t like those results once you understand them. The testers concluded that only the Sea-Me active reflector delivers a strong enough radar return to even meet the ISO 8729 standard, and some perform so poorly that they aren’t worth carrying because they’ll only give skippers a false sense of security! None of this real news in fact I discussed similar findings here almost two years ago. At any rate, the graph above plots the average Radar Cross Sections of most available reflectors. Three sailors died after the big ferry Pride of Balboa apparently ran down the 26′ yacht Ouzo early one morning near the Isle of Wight. for a head’s up about the MAIB’s recent report called “Performance Investigation of Marine Radar Reflectors on the Market.” The full PDF is available on this page, along with a typically MAIB meticulous report on the tragic sinking that prompted it.
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